Gail Konop Baker | Paris Smells Like Rotten Eggs

I send my novel about the woman who has breast cancer to my agent

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Paris Smells Like Rotten Eggs
Chapter 1
Paris smells like rotten eggs and my shoes are too flat and I’m trying not to think about the lump I found in my breast on the plane.

Standing under a six-tiered crystal chandelier, next to a grandfather clock with no face, I peer between brocaded, pheasant-printed, salmon and sea-foam green, silk tasseled drapes and see the clouds threatening rain. But I don’t care, gray is so Parisian, casting a charming old black and white film patina over Boulevard Saint Germaine.

“Bonjour! Ca va?” says a meticulously coiffed, pink-suited, b-cup, carrying a stack of freshly laundered tablecloths, wearing a badge that reads Genevieve.

Terrified that my breasts harbor cells that are conspiring propagating mutating reformulating dividing and conquering. But Genevieve is already looking beyond me into the breakfast room and I realize she doesn’t really want to know how I am.

“Tres bien, merci,” I mumble, thinking mumbling sounds more authentically French. I was taught French at my Ohio high school by an ex-marine with a thick Texan drawl, branding me with an accent so twangy that Libby, my ten-year-old middle child, made me promise to not speak in Paris at all. But I want to ask Genevieve, Why does Paris smell like rotten eggs? Why, why, why? Oh yes, Pourquoi est-que Paris and the word for eggs is oeuf but that is as far as I get in my head before her pink high heels click away and I look down at my taupe Rockports.